ITS NOT EASY BEING GREEN - THE POLITICS OF CANADA GREEN PLAN

On December 11, 1990, the Canadian federal government introduced the G reen Plan, a $3 billion comprehensive environmental action plan intend ed to guide federal environmental policy over the ensuing five years. This article examines the policy instruments contained in the Green Pl an. We develop a classification of instruments in the plan, and then o ffer an explanation for the observed pattern. We argue that the Green Plan contains a surprising paucity of measures to directly protect the environment, whether regulations to restrict or prevent pollution, ta xes to penalize polluting behaviour, or spending for clean up. Rather, the overwhelming balance of initiatives is concerned with generating and disseminating information about the environment. We have analysed the interaction of rational actors within an institutional and ideolog ical context, and argued that the contents of the Green Plan are best explained by a combination of the electoral incentives of the Conserva tive government, the budgetary incentives of Department of Environment bureaucrats, the institutional constraints posed by cabinet governmen t and federalism, and a particular social construction of the idea of sustainable development.